“Right. And we were perfectly happy there.” She slammed the iron onto the dress and started ramming it to all corners of the green cotton.
“You don’t like the place in Miami?” He sat on the bed and she sensed his eyes on her. Finally paying attention.
“The apartment is okay. The city—” She shrugged, ironing too fast to do a good job. “Mathilda makes it bearable, I guess.”
“When you start college, you can go wherever you want.” He stood, taking the iron out of her hands and smoothing the wrinkles that she’d pressed into her dress. “We talked about applying to a wide range of places because you weren’t sure where you wanted to live. Is there anywhere in particular you think you’d like?”
“Here.”
“There are no colleges in Heartache.”
“I meant to live and finish high school, not go tocollege.”
He turned off the iron and set it aside. “Do you have a list on your computer of places you applied?”
“University of Florida.” She had that anyway. Sliding the dress off the ironing board, she wished she could go back to her room and forget this whole conversation.
“Where else?” He was a patient father, but she could see the frustration behind the calm facade.
“Just there.” The words fell out. They were too hard to hold in anymore.
His arms stretched over his head as if he was waiting for the sky to fall. Then he laid his hands on his head. He walked around the room like that for a second, dodging the chair and the bed to pace in the half foot of space.
She swallowed. “I’m sorry. The applications were confusing. I haven’t done well in school since we moved.”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for not working on it with you or hiring someone to help you.”
“Lots of kids apply on their own, Dad. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I knew I was supposed to do more, I just…didn’t.”
She felt relieved to get that off her chest, but worried because the weight of it looked like it fell on her father. He already carried so much.
She wanted his attention, but not the kind that made him resent her.
“That doesn’t fix the larger problem.”
She scrambled for something to keep the peace—and keep her here. “I can do community college for a year or two while I figure out where I want to go.” Sarah clutched her dress tighter. “Or work.”
He got that “dad scowl,” which almost always meant no. “I’m not sure those are the best options.”
She hit the lever to break down the ironing board and shoved it against one wall.
“Well, I’m tired of living in a city where I don’t know anyone but Mathilda. I don’t want to go to a big anonymous university.” That was the problem with UF, she realized. Fine for Mathilda, but wrong for her. “I’m tired of not having family around me.”
“You have family.” He put his heavy hands on her shoulders, his voice so certain. “I’m here for you.”
“For now.” She didn’t want to think about next year and how things would unfold once high school was done. “And only because I drove nine hundred miles to be with you.”
His expression froze as his body stilled. A slight wrinkle between his eyebrows was the sole sign that told her she’d hurt him. But didn’t he know how much he’d hurt her, too?
She didn’t know what else to say, and—thankfully—he didn’t stop her when she walked out to dress for the clothing drive. Erin needed her, and something about that felt damn good.
Not as good as a kiss from Lucas, of course. Something she was still determined to get even if—she checked her watch—she had only sixteen hours left to make that happen.
Sixteen hours. She swallowed down the panic at the thought of returning home, back where Brandon could find her. She couldn’t leave. She grabbed her cell phone off the dresser. She needed to make a call to the only person who might make him listen to reason.
With shaking fingers, she dialed her counselor’s number and hoped she would pick up.
Chapter Nine
